WarSclerotic

US Reportedly Providing Indirect Military Aid to Hezbollah
By Ari Yashar date 9/22/2014 Via Israel National News

(Yet another reason for the US military to sit this one out.-LS)

Hezbollah PR chief gives rare interview about group’s quest for legitimacy, as Lebanese experts reveal US cooperating covertly against ISIS.

Mohammed Afif, the new head of public relations for the Lebanese-based Iranian-backed terror organization Hezbollah, gave a rare New York Times interview as Lebanese experts reveal his group is indirectly receiving American intelligence aid in its fight against Islamic State (ISIS).

Following ISIS’s temporary conquest of Arsal last month on the Lebanese side of the Syrian border, the US sent new weapons to the Lebanese army, which coordinates with Hezbollah. Likewise, US intelligence has found its way to Hezbollah according to Lebanese experts.

That leaked intelligence may explain some recent impressive achievements against ISIS, including the first known Hezbollah drone strike.

It is worth noting by contrast to the blasé indirect provision of intelligence and weapons to a terror group in Lebanon, during Operation Protective Edge US President Barack Obama blocked a routine Hellfire missile shipment to Israel and ordered strict supervision on future transfers.

Afif told the American newspaper “we need to open up a new page with the world media, with the Arabs and internationally,” hinting at the international legitimacy he hopes to achieve for the terror group under his role as media adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah recently expressed his fears of the ISIS “monster,” calling the fight with the group “a battle of life and death no less important than fighting the Israeli enemy, as (ISIS) actions and objectives only serve Israel.” Indeed Hezbollah has called to wipe out Israel numerous times, and fought terror wars against the Jewish state.

Ali Rizk, a Lebanese analyst at the pro-Hezbollah Al-Mayadeen news channel, told the New York Times that while the US cannot publicly ally with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, “what happens underneath is something totally different.”

Justifying the aid, Rizk said “Hezbollah is not representing an imminent threat against the world. It represents a threat against Israel, as Israel represents a threat against Lebanon. But Hezbollah is not going to threaten the US and Europe. Nobody said Hezbollah is cutting off heads.”

While Hezbollah may be benefiting indirectly from the US, it remains antagonistic to America over Syria, where it has joined Iran in supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad against the very rebels the US is arming. However, the ISIS threat has indeed raised talk that the US may even join forces with Hezbollah’s sponsor Iran.

Afif blamed Americans for causing ISIS by supporting Syrian rebels, saying “this beast which you raised up, as in past cases, you find it’s dangerous for you.”

(As one commentor said, “I would think direct intelligence from the White House would be impossible.”-LS)

Putin ‘privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states’
By Justin Huggler 18 Sep 2014 Via The Telegraph

(Joe Biden to Putin: ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’.-LS)

President Vladimir Putin privately threatened to invade Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, according to a record of a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.

“If I wanted, in two days I could have Russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw and Bucharest,” Mr Putin allegedly told President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, reported Süddeustche Zeitung, a German newspaper.

If true, this would be the first time that Mr Putin has threatened to invade Nato or EU members. Any threat to send Russian troops into the capitals of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Romania would cause grave alarm among Western leaders.

If Mr Putin were to act on this, Britain could find itself at war with Russia. All five countries mentioned in this alleged conversation are members of both the EU and Nato. They are covered by the security guarantee in Article V of Nato’s founding treaty, which states that “an attack on one is an attack on all”. In a speech in Tallinn earlier this month, President Barack Obama confirmed Nato’s commitment to this doctrine.

Mr Putin’s alleged threat bears similarities to remarks he made to Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, in which he warned: “If I want to, I can take Kiev in two weeks”.

Süddeustche Zeitung claims to have seen a European Union memorandum of a meeting between Mr Barroso and Mr Poroshenko in Kiev last week, during which the latter is said to have described Mr Putin’s threat.

The Russian president made these remarks in series of telephone conversations with Mr Poroshenko over the current ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

Mr Putin also warned Mr Poroshenko not to put too much faith in the EU, saying that Russia could exert its influence and bring about a “blocking minority” among member states.

On Tuesday, Ukraine ratified a historic Association Agreement with the EU, placing the country on the path towards eventual EU membership. It was the refusal of the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, to sign this agreement last year that triggered the Ukraine crisis.

The EU recently announced further sanctions against Russia, focusing on the energy, financial and arms sectors. But there have been divisions among member states over sanctions, with many worried about the impact on their own economies.

The Baltic states are particularly nervous about Russian intentions, and Mr Obama sought to reassure them with his speech in Tallinn earlier this month.

“If you ever ask again ‘Who will come to help?’ you’ll know the answer: the Nato alliance, including the armed forces of the United States of America,” he said. “We’ll be here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania.”

Mr Poroshenko is the only alleged source for Mr Putin’s latest threat, and there will be concerns he might be motivated to exaggerate in order to strengthen EU and Nato support for Ukraine.

The European Commission refused to confirm or deny whether Mr Barroso had held such a conversation with Mr Poroshenko. “We will not conduct diplomacy in the press or discuss extracts of confidential conversations,” said Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, the Commission spokesperson. “What matters to the EU and the Commission is to contribute to lasting peace, stability and prosperity in Ukraine.”

This is The Reason Israel Will Attack Iran SOON
Via Israel Video Network

How is it possible to remain sane in an insane world? Israel knows what the rest of the Western world is afraid to admit… Iran is not the first nation that wanted to wipe out the Jews and take over the world. If Israel doesn’t defend herself and all of humanity who will? A strong and crucial message.

(Meanwhile, back on the ranch…-LS)

Netanyahu: Iran behind cyber attacks on Israel
By TOVAH LAZAROFF 09/14/2014 18:24 Via Jerusalem Post

(In other words, terrorism is not only a disease, but it’s a computer virus as well.-LS)

Iran is behind cyber attacks against Israel, including during this summer’s Gaza conflict, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday evening. He spoke of the significance of Internet security both in the fight against terrorism and for the country’s future economy.

“I want to make clear that the party behind the cyber attacks against Israel is first and foremost Iran,” Netanyahu said as he addressed the fourth international cyber security conference at Tel Aviv University.

This includes cyber attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups, Netanyahu added.

“Iran and its proxies take advantage of the security and anonymity of cyber space” to attack Israel and other countries, Netanyahu said.

In recent weeks, the international community has focused on the growing threat from Islamic State, with US Secretary of State John Kerry visiting the region to attempt to pull together a coalition against the fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group.

But on Sunday in several public comments, Netanyahu attempted to refocus the debate on Iran.

“ISIS [Islam State] and Hamas and al-Qaida and al-Nusra and Boko Haram and Hezbollah, supported by Iran – they’re branches of the same poisonous tree,” he told a visiting Israel Bonds leadership delegation.

In the evening, he told the cyber security conference that Israel fights terrorist groups backed by Iran on the ground and in cyber space.

“The cyber field is increasingly becoming a battlefield,” he said.

During Operation Protective Edge, Hamas attacked Israel from the air by launching rockets and on the ground through infiltration tunnels. But it also fought Israel in cyber space by attempting to attack the country’s Internet infrastructure, the prime minister said.

But with rockets and tunnels “you know where they originate. You know who the enemy is,” he said. “In the cyber domain there are no sirens and there are no instantly discernible enemies,” Netanyahu said.

He credited Israel’s ability to halt those attacks on investments the country had already made in the field, particularly in the defense industry.

“There is an Iron Dome of cyber security that parallels the Iron Dome against the rockets. This allows us the operating space to continue fighting, to continue with daily life in Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Israel is investing in making quantum leaps in the field of cyber security, which can also provide an enormous engine of economic growth for the country.

“We are committed to maintaining Israel’s position as a global cyber power and as such we have to implement a policy that protects cyber space as an open space and as the basis for global growth,” Netanyahu said.

There is not a person or nation on earth who will not need cyber security, he said.

Cyber security and Internet development have been a top priority for Israel for the last three years. “We are building an Israeli cyber environment with an eye to the long term,” he said, predicting that Israel will continue to be a leader in this field.

“This will be the century where cyber security will be achieved or we will lose the tremendous opportunities that face humanity,” Netanyahu said.

Iran: Happy video dancers sentenced to 91 lashes and jail
19 September 2014 Via BBC News

(Girls just want to have fun. How dare they display happiness. Wait, let me get the door. Someone’s knocking. OMG, it’s the Iranian morality police!-LS)

Six Iranians arrested for appearing in a video dancing to Pharrell Williams’ song Happy have been sentenced to up to one year in prison and 91 lashes, their lawyer says.

The sentences were suspended for three years, meaning they will not go to prison unless they reoffend, he adds.

The video shows three men and three unveiled women dancing on the streets and rooftops of Tehran.

In six months, it has been viewed by over one million people on YouTube.

The majority of people involved in the video were sentenced to six months in prison, with one member of the group given one year, lawyer Farshid Rofugaran was quoted by Iran Wire as saying.

The “Happy we are from Tehran” video was brought to the attention of the Iranian authorities in May, after receiving more than 150,000 views.

Members of the group behind the video were subsequently arrested by Iranian police for violating Islamic laws of the country, which prohibit dancing with members of the opposite sex and women from appearing without a headscarf.

They later appeared on state-run TV saying they were actors who had been tricked into make the Happy video for an audition.

The arrests drew condemnation from international rights groups and sparked a social media campaign calling for their release.

Williams, whose song was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year, also protested at the arrests.

“It is beyond sad that these kids were arrested for trying to spread happiness,” he wrote on Facebook.

UPDATE: Iran ‘releases’ dancers from Pharrell Happy tribute video (Seems they were merely actors and were tricked.)

Iranian blogger found guilty of insulting Prophet Mohammad on Facebook sentenced to death
Rose Troup Buchanan Thursday 18 September 2014 Via The Independent

Soheil Arabi says he was in ‘poor psychological condition’ and wrote the insulting Facebook posts ‘without thinking’

(Contributing to this blog is punishable by death…..in Iran.-LS)

A blogger in ‘poor psychological condition’ has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammad on Facebook.

According to an ‘informed source’, speaking to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Soheil Arabi, 30, had kept eight Facebook pages under different names and admitted to posting material insulting to the Prophet on these pages.

Mr Arabi, who was arrested along with his wife in November last year by agents from the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to have written the “material without thinking and in poor psychological condition”.

Branch 75 of Tehran’s Criminal Court, under Judge Khorasani, found Mr Arabi guilty of insulting the Prophet, or “sabb al-nabi”, on 30 August.

Article 262 of the Islamic Penal Code states insulting the Prophet carries a punishment of death, however, article 264 of the Penal Code says if a suspect claims to have said the insulting words in anger, in quoting someone, or by mistake, his death sentence will be converted to 74 lashes.

The anonymous source claims: “Unfortunately, despite this Article and the explanations provided, the judges issued the death sentence.

“They didn’t even take any notice of Soheil’s statements in court in which he repeated several times that he wrote the posts under poor [psychological] conditions, and that he is remorseful.”

Although Mr Arabi’s wife was released a few hours after the couples’ arrest in November, Mr Arabi was kept in solitary confinement for two months inside IRGC’s Ward 2-A at Evin Prison, before he was transferred to Evin’s General Ward 350.

“The way he was arrested was illegal. It is not clear how the agents were able to enter their home at that time in the morning. All the doors were locked and family members were asleep. Agents entered his home and bedroom.

“He and his wife were arrested and some of their photographs and personal belongings were taken after their home was searched,” the source also alleges.

Mr Arabi will be able to appeal against the decision until 20 September.

ISIS Just Attacked Iran
Jassem Al Salami on Jun 22, 2014 Via Medium dot Com

(Happened back in June, but interesting to note that Iran got ‘slapped in the face’ by ISIS.-LS)

On June 19, militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria attacked Iranian border guards near Iran’s border city of Qasre Shirin, according to Iranian social media.

A photograph showed the bodies of at least two Iranian officers apparently killed in the skirmish. Iran’s state-controlled media didn’t initially report the clash at Qasre Shirin, as Tehran routinely censors violent border incidents.

But Iranian officials took an unusual step and eventually talked about this particular incident. The first official to react was Fath Allah Hosseini, Qasre Shirin’s representative in the Iranian parliament. Hosseini insisted that residents were not afraid of ISIS, which has captured much of northwestern Iraq in recent weeks.

Then on June 21, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan—the Iranian army’s senior ground force commander—confirmed to the state-run YJC news agency that the incident took place. But Pourdastan said that the attackers were from the Kurdish militant group Party for Free Life of Kurdistan, also known by its Kurdish acronym PEJAK.

But this an odd claim given the intensity of the attack and the location.

For one, Kurdish troops are battling ISIS forces 12 miles to the south near the Iraqi city of Khanaqin. Kurdish militia groups are scrambling to fortify their territory against further attacks. It seems unlikely they would open a second front by hitting Iran.

It’s possible that by mentioning PEJAK, Pourdastan is attempting to ease fears of an ISIS attack inside Iran. Pourdastan did not confirm Iranian casualties—a standard practice for Iranian officials.

He added that Iranian military units along Iran’s western borders are on full alert, including Iranian army aviation units equipped with AH-1 Cobra and Bell-214 Isfahan helicopters. Last week, Iranian state media also reported that the Iranian air force is on alert and ready to carry out expeditionary missions into Iraq.

Iran has previously benefited from ISIS—at least when the terror group stayed put in Syria. In 2013, when ISIS forces began attacking other rebel positions south of Aleppo, Iranian-backed forces took the opportunity to capture the city of Al Safirah, which commanded a critical supply route for Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad’s troops.

But tensions between Tehran and ISIS have been building in recent months. Previously, ISIS announced it wouldn’t attack Iranians, in order to maintain its supply routes through Iran. But in May, amid the ongoing fighting with Al Qaeda-linked rebel groups such as Jabhat Al Nusrah and Islamic Front, ISIS retracted the assurance.

After the announcement, ISIS launched a wave of suicide attacks targeting Iranian nationals in Iraq. Last week, ISIS also began publicizing battle reports in Farsi.

As Iranian regular forces brace for a confrontation with ISIS, Iran’s special operations expeditionary unit—the Quds Force—could arm, organize and command Shia militias in Iraq.

With the attack on Qasre Shirin, it appears ISIS is striking back.

U.S. ready to strike ISIS in Syria, military officials say
By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent
updated 1:55 PM EDT, Thu September 18, 2014

(“War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying the things you thought you were fighting for, and a lot of other things you kinda forgot you had.”-LS)

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. military has everything it needs to strike ISIS inside Syria and is awaiting President Barack Obama’s authorization to do so, U.S. military officials tell CNN.

For weeks, intelligence and military targeting specialists have been working around the clock on a list of targets. It’s expected the list will be presented to the President one more time, with some analysis of the risks of bombing inside Syria, as well as possible rewards in terms of destroying and degrading ISIS, according to the officials.

It is most likely that the target list will be broadly described to the President, with some analysis about what would be accomplished. Presidents generally do not review each and every target before a strike. The broad guidance is given and then the military selects the time, date, place — after the President makes the political decision to proceed.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey signed off on plans to strike ISIS in Syria.

He said Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, briefed Obama on Wednesday on the plan for striking ISIS in Syria.

“CENTCOM’s plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria — including its command and control, logistics capabilities, and infrastructure,” Hagel said. “Our actions will not be restrained by a border that exists in name only.”

Obama is “actively” reviewing options and has “offered guidance” to the Department of Defense about the target sets that he’s reviewed, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. But Earnest said that Obama is not signing off on each strike.

“These are very difficult operational decisions that will have to be made on a case-by-case basis. Many of them don’t rise to a presidential level, to the level of the commander in chief,” Earnest said.

In the “old days,” there were literally target “folders.” The military would thumb through a sheaf of classified papers detailing the target, and what aircraft and bombs would be used to strike it. Nowadays, it’s all computerized, of course. The goal, if not the process, is largely the same.

The United States has been flying drones over Syria, looking at areas where ISIS operates. The drones are looking for personnel, equipment depots, training camps, and the locations of the group’s leaders. U.S. officials tell CNN if top leadership can be located, they will be on the target list to strike. If past strike procedures against terrorist leaders in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are used again, the President would preauthorize strikes against the leaders, by name, and then they would be hit when located.

Intelligence is also collected by intercepting cell phone calls and monitoring social media sites that ISIS frequents. All of this is being repeatedly collected over a period of days because the Washington also wants to see any patterns of movement. Many of the targets are mobile, so they have to track them repeatedly. Intelligence also has to be collected on any regime forces, or air defenses in the area where the U.S. will fly. One important challenge: figuring out where civilians are located. Intelligence indicates ISIS has been moving into towns, hoping to blend in and keep safe from potential U.S. airstrikes.

All of this data is assembled for each target. Then the U.S. Central Command determines which type of aircraft and which type of bomb is best to strike the target. Strikes are expected to use precision-guided weapons in order to minimize collateral damage, especially in towns and villages. Those type of weapons can even be used to hit a precise part of a building rather than destroy an entire structure.

Each target on the list will include an assessment of the risk of flying into that area of Syria and hitting it, but also an assessment of how the destruction could impact ISIS. The Pentagon is looking for targets to make a significant impact on ISIS, not just destroy small groups of personnel or weapons, military officials tell CNN.

(Note: In another article, Kerry says Syrian President is using chlorine weapons. “On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry began testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said that while Syria had removed most of its chemical weaponry, President Bashar al-Assad continues to use chlorine weapons and is “in violation” of a treaty against the use of such weapons.”-LS)

Republicans gallop toward ground war in Syria and Iraq
By Dana Milbank September 16, 2014 Via Washington Post 

(First of all, let me be perfectly clear. In my humble opinion, this is NOT OUR FIGHT. Except for pursuing Bin Laden and hitting the Taliban for supporting him, it NEVER was our fight. If we must do something regarding ISIS, then push them back into Syria. Let ’em fight, muslim against muslim.

Instead, we have this open ended pseudo war with a sketchy mission. Actually, what we really have is one big false flag scenario with its sights set on Syria. Let’s not forget that not long ago the media was in a flurry over Russian air defense systems installed in Syria along with Russian bases and a deadly arsenal of chemical weapons that were never fully accounted for. Pretty dangerous place to be tip toeing around bombing here and bombing there in pursuit of an enemy scrurrying around like cockroaches. Collateral damage anyone?

Now we see that Obama has set another red line with Syria in a token attempt to prevent them from shooting down our Air Force while attacking that ‘existential threat’ called ISIS, or whatever the hell they call them this week. Really?? Do they think we just blew into town after falling off a watermelon truck?

Of course, the low information voter in the US is taking all this in without objection. Afterall, the mainstream media has been hammering away endlessly about the threat from ISIS for months now. As a result, the polls have shifted in favor of engagement and the war hawks are jumping on the war wagon like Mexicans on a boat preparing to cross the Rio Grande.

So I say to all you moms and dads out there. Give your kids a good hug before they march off to war once again. I hope like hell they return safely and you don’t get that horrible knock on the door by two members of our military.

Thatisall.-LS)

At Tuesday’s hearing, Graham practically pleaded with Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to endorse the use of U.S. ground troops against the Islamic State. “Do you agree that somebody’s got to go in on the ground?” he asked. “Can you envision a coalition of Arab states that have the capabilities . . . without substantial U.S. military support?” Finally, the senator challenged the general: “If you think they can do it without us being on the ground, just say yes.”

“Yes,” said Dempsey.

This was evidently not the answer sought by Graham, who then asked if Dempsey would recommend U.S. ground troops in Syria “if nobody else will help us.” Dempsey, not quite as categorical as Obama, pledged that if circumstances change to merit U.S. ground forces, he’ll recommend that.

The sudden desire for a ground war is a bit suspect, both because many Republicans adopted this view only after Obama came around to their previous view and because many Republicans oppose even the modest funding Obama has requested to train Syrian fighters. (Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she opposed “giving even more money to the so-called vetted moderates who aren’t moderate at all.”)

It may be that Republicans embraced the boots-on-the-ground position because Obama rejected it. Whatever the cause, the militancy is spreading — even though polls indicate that while Americans favor military action against the Islamic State, they aren’t keen on ground troops.

House Speaker John Boehner, asked about Obama’s no-boots vow, replied: “I would never tell the enemy what I was willing to do, or unwilling to do.”

Backbencher Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) was more blunt. He told the Associated Press that, rather than depending on “undependable” foreigners, he favors “all-out-war” waged by American forces.

As the House kicked off its debate Tuesday on training Syrian rebels, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) declared that Obama “was far too quick to rule out options and tools that he in fact may need later.”

Said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.): “We have made this decision not to have ground troops. We do not need another half-pregnant war in the Middle East. If it’s important enough to fight, it’s important enough to win.” Kingston added that war in the former Yugoslavia ended only after a U.S. decision “to commit ground troops.”

The little bit of war-weariness that was voiced on the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday came from Democrats, particularly Joe Manchin (W.Va.).

The Republicans were almost unanimous in wanting a broader war than Obama outlined. Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.), called it “foolhardy” for Obama to rule out ground troops. “There was a collective sigh of relief at ISIS headquarters in Syria when they heard him say that,” Inhofe alleged, using an acronym for the terrorist group.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) said she didn’t see how the air strikes could work “without the assistance of our trained special operators on the ground.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.) said he didn’t think “five thousand trained in a year” would be sufficient. “I want us to win.”

And Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) offered his opinion that Iraqi troops would be “more emboldened and encouraged” if they had U.S. troops embedded with them.

Dempsey suggested that Jordanian or Emirati forces might do that job.

“Well, if we all had horses, we’d take a ride,” snapped Sessions. “We don’t have that.”

Ah, but we do. The Republican Party has quickly assembled a veritable cavalry brigade of warhorses.

The Enemy of Our Enemy: Iran and ISIS on a Collision Course
by Chuck Pfarrer 17 Sep 2014, 6:43 AM PDT Via Breitbart

(Iran verses ISIS…poetic justice.-LS)

President Obama’s pledge to dismantle ISIS, drive it from Iraq, and to strike at its bases in Syria has Secretary of State John Kerry embarking on a coalition-building tour of Gulf and Arab capitals. Kerry’s task is complicated not only by a fast moving military situation, but by an intricate milieu of sectarian hatred, ambiguous allies and conflicting national interests.

Machiavellian though it may be, one avenue open to the United States is to allow one of its old enemies, Iran, to fight one of its newest enemies, the Islamic State. Win, lose or draw, the blood spilled by Iran and the Islamic State will not be American. But is the United States far-sighted and calculating enough to allow this to happen?

(Damned good advice if you ask me.-LS)

Iran has no option but to engage against the Islamic State, and will do so whether or not the United States chooses to commit forces to fight in Iraq. A stable Syria under Assad is the lynchpin of Tehran’s dream of regional hegemony. Iran must defeat the Islamic State and eject it from Iraq in order to support not only Assad, but to maintain and arm Tehran’s military surrogate in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Iran has no other contiguous allies; it must act militarily against the Islamic State to support the only two friends it has.

(That’s right… let Hezbollah get chewed up in the process.-LS)

Ironically, Tehran is facing a problem of its own making. Iran supplies not only weapons to prop up the Assad regime, but ground troops as well. Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) advise Syrian military commanders, and coordinate the actions of the Assadist paramilitaries that conduct counter-insurgency operations in the Syrian countryside. In supporting and facilitating Assad’s brutality, Iran created the conditions in which ISIS grew and thrived. Numbering approximately 30,000 fighters, the Islamic State terrorist group is a cross-pollenated creation of the Iraqi insurgency and the Syrian civil war.

(I like to refer to it as Karma.-LS)

Merged from a pro-Al Qaeda jihadi group, The Islamic State of Iraq, and the Syrian jihadist faction Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS fights in Syria as one of twenty or so military, civil, and religious entities combatting the regime of Bashir al Assad. By dint of military competence and the ruthless suppression of the civilian population, ISIS succeeded in inflicting itself on a strip of Northeastern Syria, an area amounting to perhaps a quarter of that country. Using captured Syrian territory as both incubator and springboard, ISIS re-exported jihad into Iraq, where it controls a swath of territory virtually overlapping the traditionally Sunni areas of the country. The area under the Islamic State’s control includes not only the bulk of Iraq’s Sunni minority, but petroleum reserves sufficient to finance jihad for decades to come. Iran cannot afford to ignore an enemy camped on its border, an especially one who shows every appearance of thriving.

(When you think of it, the only true obstacle facing ISIS in their effort to consolidate the Mideast is Iran, who as we know, has the same aspirations.-LS)

The coincidence that two of America’s enemies must fight each other should not compel the United States into anything like an alliance— nor even an alliance of convenience— with Iran. Tehran is no friend of the Untied States. For once, the ironic dynamics of middle-eastern politics favors, rather than frustrates, the interests of the United States. Washington has a unique opportunity to utilize the facts on the ground to diminish one familiar foe and thwart the growth of a potentially global enemy.

(‘Untied States’…I wonder if this is just a typo by the publisher or a Freudian slip?-LS)

America’s air-centric intervention should interdict Islamic State concentrations and bases only within Syria; this will have the combined effect of weakening ISIS vis a vis more moderate Syrian rebel groups, and place pressure on ISIS to logistically support its occupation of Iraq.

By focusing American air power– not on the Islamic State in Iraq, but on ISIS’s lines of communication within and from Syria– the US can shift responsibility for ground combat in Iraq to the shoulders of the Iraqi armed forces. Should the Iraqis prove inadequate to the task of ejecting the Islamic State, it will be the Iranians who will be forced to urgently take up the slack. Drawn into two morasses, Syria and Iraq, Iran will be less able to engage in world-wide jihad, less able to defend the regime of its Syrian ally Bashir Assad, and less able to hold Lebanon hostage with its cat’s paw Hezbollah.

(ISIS should, in my humble opinion, be pushed back into Syria where they can do the most harm to Iran and their boy-toy Assad.-LS)

And what if Iran should wind up defeating the Islamic State? What then? It is unlikely that Iran could engage and destroy ISIS in the short, or even medium term. Now equipped with artillery, armor and heavy weapons gleaned from Syrian battlefields, ISIS has made itself into one of the most capable players in the Syrian battle space. It will take Iran’s conventional forces considerable effort, time, blood and treasure to evict the Islamic State from Iraq.

(Iran can always nuke’em….right?-LS)

Recent intelligence indicates that the Islamic State is shifting it weapons into difficult to bomb locations, and embedding itself into civilian population centers, thus preparing itself for a drawn out contest. By modulating both its airstrikes and the US of American ground power, Washington has an opportunity to force Iran to engage a near enemy in a drawn out war of attrition. Tehran’s resources, already strained by three years of war in Syria, may be stretched to the breaking point. Any move that weakens Iran militarily is in the best interests of America and its regional allies. In the unlikely event that Iran should defeat the Islamic State precipitously, it would have done the United States a favor. A moribund or greatly weakened Islamic State would clear the pitch for more the moderate Syrian opposition groups that the United States hopes will succeed in overthrowing Assad.

The Islamic State and Iran are on a collision course; America should do nothing to prevent the crash. Long the exporters of jihad and chaos, Tehran now finds found that is has reaped the whirlwind. America should position itself to derive maximum benefit from Iran’s folly.